Madness of Anonymous

Chapter: 5

It continues to amaze you how much of this drink you can down, but all good things must end. Paying the cost of your final cup, you stand up and ask the barkeeper directions to the nearest toilet to relieve yourself. He gives a short laugh before pointing you to a door on the left, which has what seems to be a stallion depicted in black on a silver rectangle of metal. Giving a quiet thanks, you leap through the door and close it quickly. Unbuttoning your custom-made trousers, you allow the build-up of liquid to stream into the urinal which is much closer to the ground than you would expect. Finishing, you re-button your clothing and approach the nearby sink, turning the tap to allow warming water to douse across your pale hands. Only now can you notice the dim lighting, the damp clutching the walls and the putrid stench occupying the room like a festering ghoul. Your mind wanders once more, thoughts passing by you as the appendages under the tap grow more and more red from the ever growing temperature spilling over them. Your thoughts are dark, twisted versions of past events catching up to you. Your crumbling mental state decays even more as it attempts to subdue the overflow of memories and images of what happened so recently.

The knife wasn't even sharp, the force driving it's motion sickly and fuelled by anguish or maybe grief. You can't truly recall her emotions, but you knew who it was all the same. Her face was masked in such sadness you don't even know how she could even do what she did, but what matters is that she DID do it. Was it the overwhelming sadness she felt which caused the lack of aim? Thickening tears drowning her magenta globes? Or was it an inferno of rage cloaked in a cyan fur, wishing you more pain by inflicting non-fatal damage? The sound of her rage-caused yells and screams and pain-fuelled sobs rings in your ears louder and louder like a furious banshee wailing at your side. Your hands subconsciously fling to the sides of the sink, away from the searing water, and clench around the porcelain basin.

Had your home been more well-lit, you would have been able to see her approach with the instrument of what could have been your demise. But that wouldn't have been the case. You had came home later than you would have liked that night, and you were going through your house lighting each lantern to illuminate your home. You had entered the kitchen and lit the final lantern in the house, only for the orange rays cast by the light-giving object to glint across something metallic... and lethal. What was also cast by the light was the magenta irises of a very emotionally unstable being. When she pounced from the dark to inflict the first, and last, stab you knew just who doomed you. It wasn't your mind shutting down which made your chest go numb, it was your assaulter's identity. You knew that the stab would kill you quickly without true medical treatment, which you didn't have. You lost all feeling in your limbs as your mind tried to shut off to save itself from turning mad, and your arms lost even more feeling also because of the bone-breaking hug your assailant was giving you.

You had lost all hope of survival quickly, you felt your end drawing nearer and nearer with each breath. You lost your will to fight it, simply letting your body lay numb and still on the wooden floor and letting your fate draw closer. Was it this act of acceptance which drew the sense back to the murderous psychopath of what you once considered a peaceful creature? Nevertheless, she latched onto you and ended up coating the cyan fur of her underside in your thick crimson ichor. Once she realised this, she sprang into action and "dashed" out the window screeching promises of aid in her usual scratchy voice whilst giving teary eyed apologies with each breath she could muster. You barely lifted your hand into the air in a desperate bid to crawl out the front door before being devoured whole by the endless darkness of unconsciousness.

You became more akin to a brick after that night. You were caged in an endless cycle of unconsciousness and a few minutes of being awake, making you able to hear distant conversations and sometimes speech by doctors in your hospital room as they discussed your condition. Each time you were awake, your vision was blurred and fogged by drowsiness and your hearing relayed echoing voices, distorted and like glass had been coated around your ears. What you normally heard from the doctors discussing your limp body as you lay under white sheets was always grave and filled you with hopelessness. They figured you were under the effects of a coma, and each time they would always discuss the fact they didn't expect you to recover or even awake at all. They even discussed who would end up deactivating the machines keeping your weakened heart beating. You knew in the back of your mind that despite being able to awake randomly, you would soon perish once the machines switched off and you couldn't do a thing about that. Each time you awoke, you would listen to the voices around you and try to rotate your dry eyeballs towards the drawn curtains to allow you to see the beauty of the outside since every time you succumbed to sleep you didn't expect to awaken. Sometimes you wished your end would come quickly, as the constant nightmares you faced in unconsciousness chiselled away at your mental health more and more.

Visions of nightmarish creatures tearing your body asunder were an unfortunately common occurrence, making them worse was the agonising pain inflicted wherever they struck you. You felt every slice, cut and tear as if they were striking your real body and you could never stop them. You resorted to fleeing and hiding from them, but they always caught you and filled you with more and more dread each time you slipped into slumber. You could feel your very humanity get stolen away with each "death" you suffered, what was a blessing and a curse was that these "deaths" rarely occurred. Despite undergoing massive structural damage and loss of "blood", you would stay alive just so you could feel the constant stream of agony and lack of mercy these abominations had. They would lunge at you from the shadows and drag you to the floor whilst mashing their horrid jaws together like stubby scissors making you feel each individual tooth penetrate the skin of your neck and back as the jaws clamped onto your form. You would barrel down endless hallways of stone and tile to escape them only to be dragged to the ground by a curved claw hooking through the flesh of your back and sinking those jaws into your body. It wasn't just the promise of searing pain which made you run from them once in their presence, but their appearance. Horrific monstrosities incapable of existing in reality, but that thought didn't ease your suffering in the slightest. They squirmed around on the floor, always leaving a trail of blackening blood in their path as they shambled around in search of you and you alone. Their bodies were twisted and deformed, torsos of rotting human flesh with nothing but trailing organs and rotting flesh tailing behind them. They had no legs, but what they used acted as them. Within the trail of organs and decaying matter behind them were always coiling tentacles of deep grey with purple lines running across the slimy skin as veins which pumped and endless quantity of rotting gore around their twisted forms. Lanky white arms ended by two elongated fingers of the same colour to act as a twisted mockery of human hands. The claws on the tips of these fingers were a glistening see-through material but dirt and grime caked the underside of these unnatural weapons since they moved by laying prone on the ground and grasping the stone tiles in a vice-like grip and pulling themselves forwards as movement. Between their pale shoulders was a neck the length of a forearm which would bend and twist in unholy directions to coil around to face you before literally feasting on your face with their monstrous appetite for whatever flesh they could find. You still remember the vision of one of the creatures shambling around in a room only a metre away from your hiding body. In beastly rage, the creature literally tore itself apart to feed the endless pit within it's form. It still lived long enough to look you straight in the eye before it tried to weakly reach for you with it's only remaining arm. It attempted to scream for it's fellows to feed on you, but couldn't. When it grew starving, it's first meal was it's own jaw which it devoured in agony-induced screeches. You kept your mouth shut whilst your heart continued to furiously beat against your ribcage. It attempted to drag itself towards you, but grew still inches from your shivering form. You will never forget the appearance of the being's face. Skin rough and slimy with a gaping maw of serrated teeth of multiple rows with black gums. No nose appeared on it's visage, all there was to see was the creature's slobbering maw ,which continuously dripped grimy saliva, and the empty dark pits it had as eyes which would stare like devouring abysses.

These weren't the only sights you saw in your constant slumber. Sometimes you would slip into unconsciousness only to see a moment of darkness before resurfacing into consciousness weeks later. You would awaken slightly just to hear the same troubling news. But the news grew to portray an even worse image for you, one which would paint a portrait of despair. You would hear the pure joy come from the doctors as they began to say that you were now more certain to live, which made you internally wail in anguish once you figured out that you would live with the memories of those abominations coming for you and devouring your flesh... piece by piece. The news began to grow worse and worse. Your body soon stopped to randomly drop into unconsciousness and you could fight off sleep like you could before. Once this happened, you refused to slumber and stayed awake with your eyes peeled and staring at the far wall and your eyes kept scanning your room frantically. After avoiding sleep for ten days straight, the doctors grew both curious and panicky. They questioned you on your intentions. But you didn't respond. Both because of the oxygen mask strapped across your mouth and the fact you kept your eyes staring past them. It got so bad that the lunar ruler herself, Princess Luna, showed up to visit the only human in Equestria and then asked why you refused to slumber for so long. She kept asking why, over and over and over until she grew angrier and angrier and, in frustration, left the room. With a look of frustration on their own faces, the doctors pinned down you against the bed and held your limbs very tightly. Only then did you blink, but when you did, your eyes reopened with them bloodshot with your pupils even smaller than before. Anger poured through your veins, thrashing around in the bed you attempted to flee but the orderlies were many in number. You reached your head towards the orderly pinning your left arm quickly before mashing your jaws onto the fur of his forearm. Warm blood trickled slightly from the bite and dripped across your tongue, the skin nearly coming with your jaws when another orderly grabbed both sides of your head and pulled you back. The orderly you clenched your teeth on was wailing in agony on the floor with his screams making your ears ring. You used your free arm to attempt a punch towards the pony to your right but a thick blue aura began to pin the once-free arm back down. The aura struggled, your crazed mind pouring adrenaline and fury through your maddened form. Once the arm was successfully held down, you noticed the lunar princess back in the room with sweat on her brow. A doctor rushed in with a syringe of clear liquid, and immediately rushes to the arm held down by the princess' magic. He plunged the needle's tip into the bare skin of your muscled fore arm, straight into a thick and now more visible vein bulging from the growing flow of adrenaline. After a couple minutes of constant fury filled with your adrenaline-fueled thrashing, you yell an almighty scream of animalistic madness before immediately collapsing into your bed.

Your dream wasn't a peaceful one. You first saw an outer-body version of what had happened in your room. You thrashing around and then brutally biting the orderly until you broke through the skin and fur. But that was where the similarities began to distort and warp until what you was seeing made a cold spike of dread go down your spine. The vision showed you collapse onto the bed and those in the room leave, with the bite victim limping due to being quadrupedal and being helped along by another orderly. The vision becomes nightmarish, showing the same vile beings which tormented you for weeks break through the door and position themselves around the hospital room, facing you the whole time. One even climbs onto your bed and begins to stroke your chest mockingly with both of it's grotesque fingers. It then stops with it's fingers on your chest before snapping it's head all the way around and stares at you, knowing exactly where you were watching from. Your vision suddenly darkens, and you sense consciousness return to you, but you remain in darkness. You keep your eyelids sealed tight, fearing the vision from your sleep was a representation of reality. You felt a something thin press against your lips, causing you to clench your eyelids tighter when you thought it was the elongated finger of one of the monstrosities. But when you heard a voice, you slowly opened your eyes to see a pony Nurse trying to take your mouth's temperature with a thermometer. She smiles sheepishly but you fell back into your pillow and breathed a sigh of relief.

You return from the past to find a steady stream of steam flowing upwards in front of you. With a yelp, you reach out and go to turn the tap off only to hear a door closing behind you. You spin around to find a group of five stallions blocking the exit in fighting stances. One approaches, wearing a cliché black jacket and a black bandana around the snout. In each brutes' hoof was what looked like a cheap shiv made of random scraps of metal. The front most stallion approaches you, trying to intimidate you despite the size difference being in your favour.

"You must have a lot o' bits there to buy all 'em drinks..." He growls, a possible grin beneath the bandana.

Your hearing decays, his voice is almost non-existent but it still echoes in your ears. Your vision is mostly blurred like a foggy glass, the area closest to the edge of your sight grows more and more red as tunnel-vision sets in. Your silent reaction is not of fear, but of unquenchable rage. The only place your vision hasn't blurred is the miniscule point where you stare at the blade wielded by the pony. Memories flash by your eyes, the ones where the knife was thrust into your abdomen. Memories of nightmare-fuelled visions which haunted you even in reality, visions like when one nightmare showed the butchering of a live animal which the species of was hidden by the black plastic bag it was contained in. You see the vision clearly, the one of a man dressed in full butcher's uniform with coverings on his mouth which soon grew coated in blood when he began to stab the trapped creature as it wailed in agony. Your mind grows more unstable, cracks form in your sanity akin to the cracks found in abandoned houses' windows when rocks are thrown at the them overtime. You seemingly go numb, you can't feel a thing, and you can't even will your body to move. Your thoughts soon overflow with all the pent-up emotion built through your maddening experience. All the anguish felt as the one who was most loyal to you betrayed your trust, all the pain felt during the never-ending nightmares which plagued you without respite... and all the anger which had been previously frozen by sadness immediately ignites into an inferno. You act without thinking, but with insanity truly fuelling you.

It seems that whilst you ignored the thieves during your trip down memory lane, their leader had grown enraged and charged you and prepared to bring his knife into your abdomen... just like HER. You don't yell and back off in self-preservation, you grab the hoof causing it to freeze in mid-air. The stallion is stunned and looks up at you only for his eyes to grow wide and his pupils to dilate. He looks in your eyes, the most expressive part of a pony which is something all ponies learn to recognise, only to see nothing. He stares into your eyes and sees no emotion or rationality. Just pure, unpredictable, madness. Your eyes are wide open, the blue almost greying, with bloodshot veins in the whites and a dark pupil like a pinprick. He yelps in fear, attempting to jump backwards only to slip from the vice-like grip you have on his forehoof. You hear the bone crack as the force behind his backwards leap and your grip literally pulls the bones apart and snaps the rubber-like cartilage in half. He wails in agony, pleading for his fellow knife-wielding gang mates to aid him. They look in terror but begin to charge you in fiery anger at their leader's treatment. A maddened grin crawls across your face as you swing around the leader like a rag doll in a two-hundred and seventy degree spin. The use of their leader as a blunt weapon sends the rest of the gang flying into the back wall. You hold onto the leader's forearm and raises him to eye-level with you. He pleads over and over for freedom, thrashing this way and that.

"Freedom you say?" You ask mischievously, cracking your neck at almost a right-angle.

He shuts his eyelids to avoid the gruesome sight, and nods furiously up and down whilst tears begin to flow from his eyes freely.

"Oh, I'll give you freedom alright..." You purr devilishly as you reach a finger towards his closed eyes and wipe at the tears matting his fur. His eyes clench even further. You collect a drop of the salty nectar and lick the finger it was collected on. You smack your lips at the sweet bitterness.

Without missing a beat, you hold him by the neck with one of your hands, like your going to strangle him, and tear off his bandana with your other free hand. Clasping the now begging stallion by the neck with both hands, you quickly position his face beneath the stream of boiling water. He cries in burning agony as the searing liquid flows into his eyes and collects in the sockets like feasting ants. Some water even drains into his lungs as he screams in pain, burning the inside of his furred chest. In his instinctual frenzy to escape the liquid-fire, he splashes some onto your hands which are still numb from the insanity flowing through you more than your blood does. You glance over your shoulder to see the rest frozen in fear and unable to run or fight. You've grown bored of this victim and position his eye below the tap raining scalding liquid onto him. His screeches fall on death ears as your hearing decays as madness controls you like a puppet. With a quick burst of insanity-fuelled strength, you pull his face towards the tap at a great speed causing the tap to penetrate his eye and straight into his brain. If he didn't die during the impalement, he's certainly dead from the scalding water filling the void around his brain.

You release your death-grip from the stallions neck and turn around, the whole gang looking at you in shocked disbelief. You fling stray harmless droplets of searing hot water and clench your fists so hard they grow even more whiter than before. One comes to his senses and goes for the door for help and escape, only to be blocked by you as your long legs allow you to effortlessly slip in front of him. You grin down at him, bringing a clenched fist back before launching it forwards. You laugh manically when you see your fist go straight through the weak bone and penetrate his skull all the way through with your fist and forearm bloodied.  Crimson liquid spurts forth from the gaping wound and sprays all across the room. Comically, it shoots across the faces of the rest of the gang and causes them to splutter and slip on the blood soaked ground. You look at the limp body and investigate the bandana. What you see is one side is completely black but other is red (and not because of the blood).

"Show me both sides of all your bandanas!" Your crazed voice declares, jabbing a pale finger towards the group.

They fumble around and flip the sides of the bandanas. Each now has unique colours and the look of a universal outfit begins to dissipate when you see their jackets vary in colour with the leader's being black and the other's all having varying shades of grey, brown and blue. A plan formulates. "Hoof prints" hadn't yet been developed in this dark age style world and finger prints were well from being developed. Grinning you advance towards the gang. You strip off your clothing except your boxers and toss them inside a cubicle and on a closed toilet seat. You then seal the cubicle closed to avoid any blood getting onto the clothing. Taking a knife off the floor, you proceed to hack, slash and slice through the mass of fur and flesh. At the end, you step away and admire your handiwork. Around the room are the mangled and butchered corpses of the gang with one posed like he was drowning the gang leader but was stabbed during it. The others are then positioned stabbed and cut with two besides each other like they killed one another at the same moment. You yourself stand with some blood on you which you wash off with a sink not occupied by a corpse or blood (which was a hard task). Cleaning any splashes and checking yourself thoroughly in a mirror, you grab your clothes from the cubicle and dress yourself. Noticing a window at the top of a wall untouched by gore, you slide through it and close the window to avoid speculation even further. You then spot the train rolling into the station a small distance away, causing you to skip merrily towards it whilst cackling.